Recession doomed Hunger Artists theater

Brenda Kenworthy plays the title role in Hunger Artists' 2011 staging of Christopher Marlowe's 1592 drama "The Tragical History of the Life and Death of Dr. Faustus." THAI CHAU

In an era of lean times and austerity, where economic struggles are the norm, the news that a small storefront theater troupe like Hunger Artists Theatre Company is closing its doors is probably no surprise.

Rather, some may question how such an operation was able to survive for 16 years without any major donors or underwriters, managing on just ticket sales alone.

The company's artistic director, Jill Johnson, issued a scant news release on Friday announcing that the Fullerton-based troupe had done its final production. Noah Haidle's "Rag and Bone" closed on Sunday.

The release briefly described the company's history and mission statement and thanked all those who were a part of the more than 150 shows Hunger Artists produced. In a reply to a Nov. 15 email inquiring about the theater, Johnson said the company had "tried our hardest to overcome some very difficult obstacles, but our current financial situation does not allow us to continue on."

"The economy hasn't been great," Johnson said by phone over the weekend. "Like most theaters, we've been struggling for a lot of years. I think we're the only company that really relies on our ticket sales. We don't have any big donors." Attempts at fundraising, she said, had failed.

"When you don't produce many mainstream shows, it's tough to get people to make a sizable donation."

Indeed, that lack of conventionality was always the troupe's signature. Few other small companies, if any, would attempt all-female versions of Steinbeck ("Of Mice and Women") or "Julius Caesar." Few would take a chance on "The Gog/Magog Project," a daring, experimental play about a performance artist who has himself locked inside a small, cage-like space in a theater for an entire year.

The play's purpose was to illustrate the nature of art, the relationship between artist and society, and the symbiosis of art and reality – questions vital to Hunger Artists' mission statement and which defined its very nature as a theater company.

The troupe got a much-needed boost in 2002 when Vanguard Theatre Ensemble, a more well-established storefront theater company, pulled up the stakes at its small black box space in a Fullerton industrial park on South State College Boulevard and moved to the city's more bustling downtown area.

The vacancy created the perfect opportunity for Hunger Artists, which for its first six seasons had been using a makeshift space in Santa Ana's Artists Village. The group moved to Vanguard's old space in March 2002, opening with the drama "Cockfighters" by local playwright Johnna Adams.

Once the theater had established itself in Fullerton, company members became more ambitious, pushing season schedules from producing five or six shows per year to doing as many as 13 shows per season. A peak was reached in 2010, when 17 shows were produced.

Despite the minuscule size of the theater space and only a limited number of seats (a flexible 35 to 70), the company was not afraid to tackle large-scale musicals such as "Cabaret," Sondheim's "Company," "Assassins" and "Sweeney Todd," and "Bat Boy: The Musical."

While often tapping well-known published shows by known playwrights, the emphasis was always on original works by locals or lesser-known scripts by established writers. Hunger Artists was also known for putting its own spin on the classics – including multiple, original reboots of various Shakespeare plays.

Festivals of new plays were also not uncommon, often presented in ingenious or daring formats. In 2005, Johnson initiated "Dead Letter Office." Local playwrights from the Orange County Playwrights Alliance chose and dramatized writings from actual postcards written and mailed between 1910 and 1979. The result was a total of 16 new original playlets based on the intimate, personal stories told on the back of each postcard.

Brenda Kenworthy plays the title role in Hunger Artists' 2011 staging of Christopher Marlowe's 1592 drama "The Tragical History of the Life and Death of Dr. Faustus." THAI CHAU
Yvan (Ponzer Berkman, left) and Marc (Mark Coyan) appear in a scene from Hunger Artists' staging of Yasmina Reza's drama "Art." AMBER SCOTT
Ryan Holihan and Kait Ralston appear in a scene from "The Turn of the Screw" at Hunger Artists Theatre Company. EDWIN LOCKWOOD
Amber Noonan, left, and Jennifer Pearce appear in a scene from "Sans Merci" at Hunger Artists Theatre in 2010. TONY VIRAMONTES
Catherine Cox, left, Amber Scott, Katie Chidester and Rose Chang rehearse for the play "Hard Core: Women's Perspective on Iraq" at Hunger Artists Theatre in 2006. The theater announced this week that it is closing its doors. STEVE K. ZYLIUS, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER
Hunger Artists protested the then-impending Iraq War by joining in a global production of "Lysistrata," an ancient Greek play in which the women of Greece stop their husbands from going to war by withholding sex from them. Shown are actresses Shannon C. M. Flynn, left, Jami McCoy and Kimberly Fisher. ANA VENEGAS, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGSTER
Mack the Knife (Jason Lythgoe) is visited in jail by Lucy (Marissa Thompson) in Hunger Artists' staging of the Brecht-Weill musical "Threepenny Opera" in 2006. DARCY LYTHGOE
Hunger Artists Theatre staged "Hamlet" in 2001.

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